A blog dedicted to the history of arcade video games from the bronze and golden ages (1971-1984).

Saturday, October 4, 2014

The First European Imports???

Recently, I came into
possession of a number of documents from the Magnavox v Bally case(s) of the
1970s and found some fascinating new info. A quick background before jumping into
the details: starting around April, 1974 Magnavox began filing suit against a
number of coin-op companies for patent infringement. They started (I believe)
with Chicago Coin and Seeburg, but eventually brought in a number of other
companies, including Atari, Bally, Midway, Ramtek, and Allied Leisure (consolidated
under a single case).

I have long wanted to get my
hands on the trial documents for the case, since they often contain
tidbits of info that you can’t get anywhere else. In addition, they are much
closer (in time) to the original events and, given that they are legal
proceedings, claims are more likely to be accurate since a) the parties often
provide physical evidence to back them up and b) the parties are under
oath (this doesn’t mean they couldn’t lie, but it would be riskier to do so).

Recently, Marty Goldberg
pointed me to a 2012 article on the first known video game lawsuit, which
actually wasn’t the Magnavox case but the 1973 Allied Leisure v Midway case:

I found the article to be
outstanding, and very well researched (sadly, far better, IMO, than most of the
video game history that you find on the web or in print). I strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in early video game history.

Even better, the author of
the article was kind enough to provide me with copies of the trial documents
that he had not only for the Allied v Midway case, but also for Magnavox v
Bally.

Two of the most interesting
sections to me were the depositions of Jerry Koci (Chicago Coin VP of
Engineering and long-time game designer) and Bob Fritsche (Odyssey product
manager for Magnavox).

Chicago Coin

The most interesting of the
two was probably Jerry Koci’s deposition, taken on May 28, 1975. Chicago Coin had been in the arcade
business since 1931 and between 1973 and 1975 they produced 8 video games, most
of them Pong clones. Koci’s most interesting revelation concerned the game TV Goalee.

TV Goalee was
actually an interesting game in its own right. While the game itself appears to
be another ball-and-paddle soccer game, it had a few twists. For one, it
used joystick controllers (though that isn’t overly interesting, as there were a
number of other Pong games that did so). The ball didn’t bounce off the walls
as in many other “hockey” style games (though that may have been common in
soccer games). The really interesting part to me, however, is the cabinet,
which included a miniature 3-D soccer stadium with the monitor mounted horizontally.

Still more interesting is that the game was actually designed not by Chicago Coin, and not
even in the U.S., but in Australia, making it one of the earliest foreign video
games licensed for release in the U.S.

Here is the relevant section
of Koci’s testimony:

Q Does Chicago Dynamic [note
Chicago Coin was a division of Chicago Dynamic Industries] employ or retain or
utilize any consultants for the design, development, or manufacture of video
games?

A We have in the past used
Exidy, and we have consulted with Illinois Research on some problems.

Q What’s the full name of
that company? Is that Universal Research?

A Illinois Tech.

Q The university or college?

A Yes, the research
division.

Q Has Illinois Research
Division of Illinois Institute of Technology actually designed a game for you?

A No, sir. They were called
in on specific static problems.

Q Anyone else that Chicago
Dynamic has used as a consultant, designer, developer of video games?A We have not used a
consultant, but we did acquire a game made in Australia.

Q What game is that?

A Well, it’s Goalee, TV Goalee.

Q I think I asked you about TV Goalee before and what the origin of
that was?

A Are you sure it was
Goalee? You weren’t referring to Tennis? [Note – Koci had earlier claimed that he
didn’t recall where TV Goalee was originally
designed, but he was apparently thinking of TV Ping Pong or TV Tennis]

Q Well, early, I thought I
had, but that’s not important.

A If it was Goalee, then Mr.
Anderson, that came from Australia.

Q Let’s pursue that a little
further.

A Okay.

Q What’s the name of the
source of that TV Goalee designed in
Australia?

A I can’t recall. It’s our
distributor called Leisure-something Enterprise.

Q Would you provide us with
the accurate name of that company and perhaps its address in Australia?

A Yes, They are located in Perth.

MR. THREEDY I think it’s
Leisure Time.

THE WITNESS Leisure Time or
Leisure Enterprises?

MR. THREEDY Leisure Time
Enterprises.

THE WITNESS Well, we will
confirm it Mr. Anderson.

Q How did TV Goalee first
come to the attention of Chicago Dynamic?

A Mr. Steinberg, the
president of Leisure in Perth, Australia, had written us about the game and
sent in a prototype at our direction.

Q Does the game have the
same name in Australia, or is it called by a different name?

A I don’t believe it was
ever produced in Australia, to my knowledge.

Q Does Leisure manufacture
video games?

A No, sir.

---

OK, so who was Leisure Time
Enterprises and when did this all occur?

I suspect that Koci is
actually referring to Leisure & Allied Industries, a leading Australian
coin-op company. Leisure & Allied Industries was a group of companies
founded in 1958 by Malcolm Steinberg (note that Koci had said the president of
Allied was “Mr. Steinberg”). they are probably best known as a distributor and for starting the Timezone chain in
Australia in 1978.

The following photo, from
this site was captioned “Our factory, Palmerston St, 1973, Perth”

From trade magazines, I know that the company still located at that address in 1977, meaning that they were indeed in Perth when TV Goalee was made.

Given the similarities of
the name, the location, the witnesses uncertainty, and the name of the president, I think Koci was actually
referring to Leisure & Allied Industries. It's possible, however, that Leisure Time Enterprises was either a division of Leisure & Allied or another company they set up. Malcolm Steinberg had other relatives that worked at his company. So another possibility is that one of them ran another company in Perth.

BTW, here’s a photo of Malcolm
Steinberg back in the day (I suspect 1958), from the same site.

And here he is today:

I’m not sure if Allied
designed the cabinet or just the game. So when was TV Goalee made? Koci answers that question too. In fact, he provides
production run dates for almost all of Chicago Coin’s video games. Production
of TV Goalee started April 29, 1974 and
ended August 22, 1974. I have only found one release announcement for the game,
from the June, 1974 issue of Vending
Times, but I suspect they began selling it in early May (since sales
usually started shortly after production began). They also showed it at a
distributors meeting on May 3, which supports a May release date.

So TV Goalee was an early example of a foreign-made game licensed for
release in the U.S. but was it the first? I’d have to go back through my notes
to be sure, but it certainly seems to be a candidate. I wrote earlier about
Midway’s TV Basketball (a licensed
version of Taito’s Baskbetball)
being possibly the first Japanese game licensed for U.S. release. I’m not sure
when TV Basketball was released, but my best guess is around June, 1974. If
accurate (and it may not be), this means that TV Goalee came
first. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any earlier European video game
licensed for U.S. release, but I’d have to read through my notes. There were a
number of Canadian ball-and-paddle games, but I don’t know if they were sold in
the U.S. and if they were, if they were licensed or just sold by the Canadian
manufacturer (the first Canadian coin-op video game company may have been Volly,
which was allegedly set up by Ramtek but I think they only sold games in
Canada). There is also the possibility that Leisure & Allied sold the game to Chicago Coin outright rather than licensing it (though even if true, it might still be the fist European-designed game released in the US).

Super Flipper

Chicago Coin’s most
interesting video game (IMO) was Super
Flipper.

I talked about this one
earlier, so I won’t go into the details here, but Koci revealed some
interesting information about its origins as well.

Q Who developed the Super Flipper game?

A That was developed by a
company in Ancona, Italy.

Q How do you spell that?

A A-N-C-O-N-A

Q Do you know the name of
the company?

A Model Racing

Q Company?

A Company.

Q Is that company affiliated
with Chicago Dynamic in any way?

A They recently became our
distributors for Italy. Prior to that, we had purchased – or at least arranged
a royalty agreement on a game called Trapshoot.

Q Was that a video game?

A No sir, it was not.

Q Was that a game that they
had developed and licensed you to make?

A Yes, sir.

Q Was Super Flipper a game
which was completely developed by Model Racing and sold to you as a complete
package, or was it a development agreement between the two companies?

A It was completely packaged
and sold to us as a completed game.

Q Is Model Racing Company of
Ancona, Italy a manufacturer of video games, do you know?

A They have manufactured
this one, and I think it could have been their first introduction to video
games.

Q Have they distributed Video games of
U. S companies in Italy, do you know?

A Up to -- actually, I don't know, Mr.
Anderson

Q For how long gas Model Racing
Company been a CDI distributing company in Italy?

A About a month, month and a halt.

Q What contact had CDI -- and when I say
"CDI," I mean Chicago Dynamic

A Right.

Q -- had CDI had with Model Racing
prior to that first representation about a month ago?

A As I mentioned before , we did
arrange a royalty arrangement on Trapshoot,
which was about a year and a half ago, two years.

Q Have you had any other dealings with
Model Racing Company other than the recent distributorship and the arrangement
on Trapshoot and the arrangement on Super Flipper.

A No, sir, not to my knowledge.

Q How did Super Flipper first come to Chicago Dynamic’s attention?

A The manager of our Wiesbaden office,
by the name of Michael Barr [sp?], is in close contact with all our
distributors and manufacturers throughout Europe. And as I recall the story,
they had called Mike – that is, Model Racing – that they had Super Flipper pretty well finished, and
that he, Mike Barr, should make arrangements for somebody at CDI, if they could
run over to Italy to look at the new game.

Q Did you go and look at it?

A Avron Gensberg went there, Mr.
Anderson. I have been there many times.

--

Actually, this "revelation" is not entirely new. The Italian Coin-Op Video Games
Zone had earlier speculated that Super
Flipper was a licensed version of Model Racing’s UFO, which they claim was “the first original [video] game made in
Italy”

The site claims that UFO was shown “in January, 1975 at the
AMOA Exhibition” but this is clearly wrong, since the AMOA (actually just the MOA at the time) was held November
1-3, 1974. I suspect they may have meant the ATE in London, whish was held in January, 1975. Model Racing was there. In fact, here's a photo of their booth at the show, featuring their shooting game Duck Shooting

I don't know if they showed UFO, however. I do know that they showed UFO at the Milan Fair, which I think was in April.

Other
Revelations

Koci revealed a few other interesting facts during his
deposition. The most interesting to me were those production dates I mentioned
earlier.

Here they are:

TV Ping Pong 4/5/73-8/12/73

TV Tennis 8/18/73-11/29/73

Olympic TV
Hockey/Olympic TV Football 11/28/73-1/18/74

TV Goalee (licensed from Allied
& Leisure Industries) 4/29/74-8/22/74

TV Pingame (licensed from Exidy)
2/5/75-4/29/75

He
also noted that production on Super
Flipper had just started "today" (presumably 5/28/75).

That
leaves only Demolition Derby (also
licensed from Exidy).

I
am not sure if the production run for Olympic
TV Hockey and Olympic TV Football
was for both games or just one. Koci claims that Olympic TV Football was the European version of Olympic TV Hockey (they probably
changed the name since Europeans would be more familiar with football/soccer
than hockey).

2 comments:

I just corrected the Model Racing page on ICVZ site.Thanks for the information. It is very interesting that MR did not have to cross the ocean to sell the video game. I did know nothing about Mr. Barr in Wiesbaden; so I have concluded that the agreement had been written in the USA. I can confirm Ufo was presented during ATEI (*) 1975 in London; is reported in the February '75 issue of "Automat", a specialized magazine by SAPAR (**), and in the book "Avoid Missing Ball", also published by SAPAR. Lanfranco Chinea, Model Racing manager, said during the presentation:

"Assomiglia […] ad un blgliardino elettronico, ma non è un blgliardino elettronico. È stato fatto con un televisore, ma non è uno dei soliti giochi con televisore, a due o quattro giocatori; è solo un gioco Model Racing. Un anno è occorso per il copletamento di questo progetto […]"(It looks like an electronic pinball table, but it's not an electronic pinball table. It is made with a TV set, but it's not another game with a TV set, for two or four players. It's just a Model Racing game. It took one year to complete the project.)

(*) As far as I know, the name of the London show was (and currently is) ATEI. "ATE" it's probably a typing error.(**) See this page: http://www.tilt.it/deb/bibliografia-en.html